


Anesthesia

by Greekhoop



Category: Yami No Matsuei, Zetsuai and Bronze
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-02
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:52:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greekhoop/pseuds/Greekhoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Muraki meets a handsome, mysterious, silver-haired stranger. And so does Hirose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The phone rings just before dawn. When I pick up, a voice on the other end of the line says, "Nanjo Hirose? I'm sorry to wake you…"

I've been awake for hours.

My calf muscles feel like they've been molded out of lead. My heart's been replaced by a car battery that pumps green acid through my veins. I have to use my shoulder to hold the phone to my ear; my fingers are too stiff. They remember too well the shape they take around the hilt of a katana.

I don't tell the voice on the phone any of this. I don't even tell him he's interrupted my morning kata. I just tell him, "Go on."

"It's about your brother, Nanjo-san…"

Cold air licks the sweat from my body. By the time I hang up the phone, I'm shivering.  
Stiffness has crept up from my hands like a poisoning of the blood, and settled at last in the bends of my elbows. My shoulders and biceps ache enough that I don't want to try moving them, so I hold myself rigid as a statue. My stomach feels as small and hard as a fist, but it's nothing a Percocet breakfast won't fix. Chase it down with a swallow of good brandy, and even that phone call starts to seem far away…

***

The next time I open my eyes, I'm in the backseat of my Mercedes.

I know this because the interior is charcoal gray, like my suit, and leather, like my shoes.  
My mouth tastes like cotton gauze, and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me that I'm on my way to the hospital. None of this sits right with me. I'm going out of my way for Koji, and that's the one thing I swore I would never do. We have an arrangement, my little brother and I, one of the stipulations of which is that we do nothing for each other, and expect nothing in return.

It ultimately matters little whether or not I approve of his lifestyle choices. One fact cannot be disputed: Nanjo Koji can look after himself. But the call I got this morning mentioned something about a car crash. Something about critical condition. It sounded urgent enough that I've cancelled my lunch meeting and sent Akihito into the office in my place. I'm starting to remember clearly now, which means it's time for more pills.

Nothing ever goes away completely, but sometimes you can drive it down deeper than the drugs can touch.

***

The next time I open my eyes, I'm inside.

The one thing I can't stand about hospitals is how white they are. White the way blood is red; white the way ink is black. White the way money is green. So white that they sting my eyes, and make the preamble to a tension headache appear at my temples.

In the annex outside the emergency room, I've somehow managed to twist myself into a blue plastic chair. It's time for someone to tell me what's going on. I'm beginning to suspect I'm the only one who hasn't been briefed.

All I really want to know is what, exactly, my money isn't good enough to fix this time.  
Then, I'm not alone anymore. If I had been watching for his approach, I wonder if I might have been moved by it. But my eyes were closed, and I didn't see him until he was right at my side.

"Pardon me," he says. "Might you be here for young Nanjo-san?"

He's the first person to speak to me since I got here, which I suppose deserves something in the way of thanks. I push slowly to my feet to meet him.

He's wearing white, and his hair is a wing shaped sweep of silver across his face. He wears it in his eyes, in a style a decade too young for his face. And I don't know who he thinks he's fooling with those red junk jewelry earrings…

I hold out my hand to him.

"My name is Nanjo Hirose. I believe you're referring to my brother."

He takes my hand, and his fingers slide across my palm like a silk tie fresh off the rack. Like cool cellophane peeled back from a plate of chilled caviar. And my skin, worn as rough and as hard as the hilt of my sword, must feel like a talon to him.

I savor it.

There's a part of me that wants it to hurt him, for no other reason than that he is beautiful, and I know how much trouble that can cause.

"Indeed." His tightens his grip.

We don't so much shake hands as we do clasp them, like the last survivors of a sinking ship, set adrift on open water.

"Muraki Kazutaka," he says. "I'm the doctor in charge of your brother."

An untarnished silver gaze slips to the chart in his hand. "His injuries were extensive. We've stabilized his condition, but he's suffered severe trauma and is unresponsive to stimuli. There's no telling when he might awaken."

This must be it. Nanjo Koji's final fuck you. One last time, with feeling.

It's not that I didn't know this would happen eventually. I was Cassandra by way of the Society Page. All I ever had to do was switch on the ten PM entertainment news for a look into my brother's future.

"Are you all right, Nanjo-san?" Muraki raises an eyebrow. I just catch a glimpse of it, beneath all that silvery-white hair. "Do you need to sit down?"

"I'm fine."

"You seem angry."

I am angry, but I hadn't known that is showed. I learned a long time ago that nothing makes you weaker than tipping your hand like that. "I don't suppose you can tell me what happened? To Koji, that is."

"I'm a bit unclear on the details. It seems that he was involved in a motorcycle accident on the way to the airport. He was in quite a hurry; perhaps he was going to see someone off…?"

"I wouldn't know."

I'm afraid I said that too quickly, as if I were anxious to disavow the connection between us. I smile at him, but I've never been very good at setting people at ease. "I haven't seen my brother in two years, Dr. Muraki."

"All the same, as the next of kin you may have to make some difficult decisions, should his condition not improve."

He tilts his head to the side, and his hair shifts and gives me a brief glance at his face. His eye is still veiled like a Burlesque dancer. "There's a very real possibility that your brother may never wake again."

"For a doctor, you're not very compassionate."

Those Burlesque eyes flash at me. "And you're not very compassionate for a brother."

That may have hurt a little. Those words slip in between all the plates of armor I've laid in place.

Muraki turns away from me. "He's resting right now. Would you like to see him? I can take you to his room."

“Yes, please.”

I didn't hate hospitals until a few months ago. I didn't understand what people found so revolting about them until I spent too much of the last half year in one. My father is still making me wait for him to die. He's six months past his expiration date, and his liver looks like a plate of runny scrambled eggs. He just an intermittent spike on a heart monitor now, but he won't let go. Men like that are too spiteful to die. He'll never leave, as long as he still has someone left alive to hate him. In some ways, he and Koji are more alike than I'd care to think about. To think is to be reminded that my legacy is a quadriplegic house, a family crippled on all sides.

As if the view from where I'm standing wasn't bad enough, a few steps ahead of me Muraki's hips sway sharply when he walks, and the tilt of his head is arrogant. He's a concealed weapon, this doctor. He's a vial of cyanide with a cognac label.

"Here it is, Nanjo-san."

He opens the door to one of the rooms, and stands aside. I can feel his eyes on me as I go inside. Two hot embers at the back of my neck, tracing the curve of my spine downward.  
But I'll attend to matters with Dr. Muraki presently. Right now, my business is with my brother.

I suppose it was too much to ask for Koji to look innocent, even in his sleep. A roadmap of lacerations sprawls across half his face, drawing the corner of his mouth up into a perpetual sneer. The Rorschach splatter of bruises stamping across his jaw to disappear beneath the gauze over his fractured cheekbone makes his face look gaunt with pain.

"Does he… feel anything?"

"No." Muraki shuts the door behind himself, and perhaps there's an extra click when the lock slides into place. Or maybe I'm just imagining things.

But his voice is low with stifled laughter, and I know I'm not imagining that. "Do you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. If I wanted to feel something, I'd go to the theater."

My hand moves over Koji's forehead, lifting his hair out of his eyes. It's shorn to the skin on one side of his head, revealing a row of stitches over his left ear. Ugly and stark and black; looking, as near as I can tell, like they're the only thing keeping his spoiled foolish brains from leaking out all over the pillow. I let the locks of hair in my hand fall over that gash, over the bruised and ruined half of his face, and he's beautiful again.

He's whole again, just like that.

"Siblings can be such a burden, wouldn't you agree?"

Muraki's closer than he was a moment ago, and I don't turn to face him. "I suppose."

"And yet you don't sound certain."

"I was always told that I shouldn't speak ill of the dead."

"Your brother isn't dead, Nanjo-san, I assure you. He could live another decade like this. Another two decades, if your fortune holds out that long."

"Wouldn't that make him a parasite?"

"Yes. And it makes you a god." He laughs, and it sounds like glass breaking somewhere else in the house. "As far as Koji is concerned, that is."

"I hope, for your sake, he cannot hear you say that." My voice comes from a long way off, my eyes are drawn back to my brother. I can feel that powerful magnetism he has…

Muraki sigh, but not like he's tired, though I suspect he's been up all night, well past the end of his shift. He sounds bored, rather, like the last guest left at a party that's ended too soon.

"No," he says. "I really don't think you need to worry about that."

I feel his eyes on me when he tells me, "Don't look at him anymore. There is nothing you can do at the moment, and if you get hysterical…"

Two fingertips brush along the inside of my wrist. Like tiny silver fish, they dart beneath the cuff of my shirt.

This is too much, all at once, without any time to catch my breath. The bottle of painkillers inside my coat is heavy. I can feel it resting just above my heart, but it might as well be in a different world completely.

For some reason, it feels like betrayal.

My hand snaps around Muraki's wrist. Thin bird bones shift in my grip, and there's a delicious moment when the eye he doesn't have hidden from me widens in surprise.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" My forearm snaps across his shoulders, pushing him back against the wall.

It's not a good hold; he could break free if he fought me a little.

But he doesn't fight at all.

His smile has returned, icy and cruel. He's just a white shadow against white plaster. Like a chameleon, I think, without knowing why.

"How fortuitous," he says. "I was just wishing that you would put your hands on me."

There's a fluttering in the pit of my stomach that I know shouldn't be there. There's something frantic in the back of my mind, like the beating of black wings. Muraki twists a little beneath me, a tiny movement that makes him all long legs and pouting lips and delicate cheekbones.

He looks soft, but hard. Sweet candy fluff with pins and needles hidden inside.

But if I squinted just right, he could be… not a woman. But not a man, either.

Something in between the two.

A soft sound of disgust bubbles up from the back of my throat. I shove him back, and he moves loosely beneath my hands, limp like a doll. The back of his head hits the wall with a solid crack, and I find my eyes drawn to Koji for an instant, as if the sound might somehow have awakened him.

When I look back, Muraki's only smiling. "What's wrong? Are you afraid he'll overhear?"

He steps away from the wall, reaching up to rub discreetly at the back of his head with one hand. "This is between us. It's no business of his."

My first instinct is to back away, but I don't. And I find too late, that I have made a mistake. "You can't mean—"

His hand moves slowly, like the ghost of a dead lover across the bedroom floor. The next word catches in my throat, and before I can choke it out he makes it all so suddenly and profoundly insignificant.

His long fingers brush my hair back.

His eyes are closed when he stretches up to kiss me. I know, because mine stay open the whole time. I am, for the next moment, helpless. My hands are dead weights at my sides, unable to shove him away. Unable to lash out at him.

Unable to kill him, which is, I think, what I really want to do.

I want to hurt him for feeling lithe and alive against me. For being the same kind of colorless as morphine and aspirin. For tasting like cigarettes, and smelling like antiseptic and goddamn lilac shampoo.

I pass a century in his arms before he pulls away, catching my lower lip between his teeth as he draws back. "To save your brother… will take a miracle. You don't believe in miracles, do you, Nanjo-san?"

I draw a deep breath, and try not to taste him in my mouth.

"My brother will be fine." It's a struggle to keep my voice even; I can hardly hear myself over the throb of my pulse at my temples. "You, on the other hand…"

"Hush." His smile is sweet, and I think that there's nothing right now to keep me from wrapping my hands around his throat and squeezing until he doesn't move anymore.

But I don't.

And he says, "I've been watching you watch me all morning. You must be very worried, Nanjo-san. Your guard is down. You know, I can give you a miracle, if you only have a little faith in me."

"What do you want?"

His gaze warms, and I'm reminded, suddenly, of my brother and the way he does everything wrong, but can still shape people into whatever he wishes. Like a fire, you can't pass through him without being consumed. I've never been able to resist Koji before; ever since he was a child, I have never been able to deny my brother what he really wants.

He makes me helpless.

And while I'm thinking that Koji isn't a boy anymore, and it's really time he learned some discipline, and as soon as he wakes up I'm going to put my foot down… Muraki kisses me again, like a thief, stealing from a house while the owner is away. His lips are hard, and twisted by a sardonic smile.

I'm helpless, and I can't live like that. I don't know how.

"Beautiful," he says, wrapping me in long, delicate limbs: one arm around my shoulders, the other the small of my back. Holding me so close that it's past the point where it's worth it to feel uncomfortable. "Your hair, I mean. Your eyes. That shade of silver is such an unusual color."

"They're the same as yours…"

"Yes," he says.

I can feel the heat off his body, even through all the layers of clothing between us. "We look something alike, don't you think?" He laughs. His fingers curl my tie, sliding lower. "I suppose that makes us narcissists. Not that there was ever any doubt of that."

He's on his knees by then, long coat feathered out behind him. His dry cleaning bills must be astronomical.

When his breath brushes me through my pants, the muscles low in my stomach grow taut, and my suit feels tighter. I step back, and my calves hit the edge of the hospital bed, so I sit down hard beside Koji, close enough that I can feel his hip against my hip.

Muraki must have noticed, how my eyes were drawn to my brother's still face. His hands slide up the insides of my thighs, and I let him ease them apart. "It would hurt him, wouldn't it? If he could see? His doting older brother, too preoccupied to hold a proper bedside vigil."

Obviously, he doesn't know Koji that well.

"Do you like the way that sounds?" he says. "He's hurt you before, hasn't he? I can see it in your face. Wouldn't it feel good to hurt him now?"

"Muraki…" I manage that much, but then his mouth is on me, tonguing me through my pants, and I can't get the rest out.

I didn't plan for any of this. My fingers tangled in his hair, hips angling up against his wet, inviting mouth My breath coming in quiet little sobs as his lips work over me. Nothing, I think, nothing has ever been this hot…

When he pulls back, it takes me a moment to realize, that soft sigh came from me, and that cold laugh came from him.

"What a powerful man you are, Nanjo-san," he murmurs.

I watch his hands dance down the front of my pants, flicking open the buttons. Clever, cool fingers slipping inside the fabric as it parts, stroking. "Tell me you want me."

Something in the back of my mind snaps into place. Like a katana sliding back into the sheath, I'm whole again, complete. Muraki must have noticed that something has changed, something in the air between us has chilled, because he tries to draw away. I catch him on the jaw with the back of my hand, and his head snaps to the side. A thin ribbon of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

"I ought to have you killed," I say, as I push to my feet again,

It takes a moment to get my clothes straightened. My hands are shaking, and I'm still hard. Hard, from his mouth…

As I struggle with the locked door, I can hear the whisper of clothing as he gets to his feet. And as I let myself out into the bleached hallway, I think I hear him say, "I shall see you again, Nanjo-san."

Or maybe he says nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

I wait until after we've eaten before bringing up business. It is what politeness dictates, and I have made it my custom to always be polite while in this house.

"I need a favor."

His eyebrows lift like the plumes of smoke from his antique pipe. "I've heard that before, Muraki."

"Don't try to play the martyr, Oriya. It's nothing difficult."

"I've heard that, too." He's silent as he pours tea for us. He has a way of moving that's both listless and irritated, as though he's grown tired of everything. Even being annoyed holds no thrill for him anymore.

He fascinates me. From a strictly intellectual standpoint, of course.

And he says, as he passes the tea to me carefully, "Go on and get it over with."

"I only want some information." I take a sip. It's hot, but it doesn't burn. "You've been preparing a stronger brew lately."

He sighs, relieved. Deep down, we both know that unsavory business doesn't suit him. He's too meticulous for it. A good criminal is one who is only cautious enough to not to be caught, not one who is so cautious he is always dreading it.

"About what?" he says.

"All I really have is a name. Nanjo. Perhaps you've heard it before...?"

"Nanjo?" He glances up, his hair making messy spider webs around his face. "I didn't know you had an interest in pop music, Muraki."

I know he's making fun of me, but he makes it difficult to be offended. Any humor he has is dry to the point of desiccation.

"Actually, it is his older brother who has captured my interest."

"Akihito, you mean?"

But then his lips pull into a hard little smile. I know that expression. I've seen him close a trap on unsuspecting prey enough times. "Or... could it be Hirose?"

"I don't like that look, Oriya. Do you know something about him?"

"We've corresponded, briefly."

He's always a step ahead of me. Without even knowing it, he's always right where I need to be. It's what makes me adore him, and it's what makes me, deep down in the reptile part of my brain, fear him a little.

It's what makes me want to hate him, and it's what makes me unable to.

"Please, elaborate," I say.

"It was nothing, really. His youngest brother caused a disturbance in my restaurant, and Hirose interceded on his behalf to see that it did not become public."

"That boy, Koji, is quite a handful, I hear."

He nods. "They've been estranged for several years now. Koji does well enough for himself, even without the family money."

"Ah, the Nanjo fortune. Tell me, how much did Nanjo Hirose pay for your inscrutable silence?"

Oriya only lifts one arm languidly, letting the soft light tangle in the silken folds of his haori. Dark blue, rich with violet embroidery. It's a color I've never seen on him before, and it smells like money. I have heard that it takes years to dye that shade of indigo. My knowledge of antiques is humble, but I'm not a complete philistine. It would be difficult not to see the wealth stitched in to every seam.

"Do you like it?" Oriya says, as though it explains everything. He tilts his chin back a little, looking at me along the length of his lashes. "You ought to stay away from that man."

"Don't worry, I'll see that any extravagant gifts are passed on to you."

"That's not what I'm talking about." He moves suddenly, setting his hand over mine. "Nanjo Hirose is dangerous. Even he doesn't even know how dangerous he can be…"

"Your concern for me is touching." I tug at my trapped hand, but he's left me with no graceful way of extracting it.

"That family is troubled, Muraki. Deeply troubled. Suicide, madness, suspicious accidents. I've heard the word "curse" so many times… I don't know what to believe anymore."

I shake my head.

"I'm not interested in what other people say. I'm interested in what you know. What do you see, Oriya, when you look at Nanjo Hirose?"

He sighs softly. He doesn't like when I ask this of him; doesn't like to be reminded that he can see what others cannot. But he doesn't complain. He never does.

"I see… much the same thing I see when I look at you. A man who has not yet come into his full potential. But you don't want to be the one to make him realize it, Muraki.

"What makes you think I would do such a thing?"

"You are who you are."

This time, I do shake him off. I'm not looking at his face, but I can imagine the way his mouth must twist. "Such an unusual man. His hair is silver, you know. Stark white, as though it's never been anything else."

"He must dye it."

"He does nothing of the sort." I'm curious to see how Oriya will react when I add casually, "I checked."

"You...?" All at once, he understands. I'd like to say it stings, the way his lips twist in disgust.

But it doesn't. Not at all.

"You ought to be more careful," he says. "I'm afraid..."

"Are you?"

His eyes narrow. "I'm _afraid_ you're not taking things seriously enough."

"I assure you, Oriya, I'm taking things very seriously."

He's silent for a moment, as though there's something he dreads saying, as though saying it will make it more real than it was when unspoken. "You think Nanjo is... like you, don't you?" He fingers a lock of his own hair. "Because of this."

"I think that there is something unusual about him. It's a feeling I get."

"A feeling?" He doesn't sound convinced. "I don't know what you mean."

"Am I not allowed to have intuition now, Oriya? I did not know you had a monopoly on the market."

"Forgive me, then."

When he submits to me, it's like a wave breaking against a rock. "I looked him up," he admits. "After he was here. I'll send that information to you. Will that be satisfactory?"

"Quite. Though… I would like to know your impression of him, as well." A toss off a little smile. A cold smile. A smile I know he can't resist.

"Silent," Oriya says. And he gets to his feet, slipping his pipe into his hand as he turns to open the door that looks onto the courtyard.

"I find him very silent."


	3. Chapter 3

It's an hour past midnight when I open my eyes.

I've slept, but only briefly. The sound of footsteps in the hallway is very loud in the place, back here in the traditional rooms where the walls are made of paper. The idea, I believe, is that if one drinks enough, one will stop hearing it.

But I've drunk only sparingly. Alcohol doesn't sit well on a stomach full of pills.

They didn't have Oxycoton back when Kokakurou was built. They didn't even have Ibuprofen. The world has moved on since then, as it inevitably must.

The girl I was with is gone now.

Her name was Murasaki. I remember, not because I felt any affection for her, not even because it was so obviously a pseudonym as whores do not have names with such character, but only because I was taught early on that names could be powerful weapons in the right hands.  
She was here before I closed my eyes, because that's what the girls here do. They wait for you to sleep.

It's meant as a consideration, but it only makes things painful.

The muscles in the small of my back ache from making love… No. From fucking. From pounding her through the futon while she clawed at my back and stifled little cries against my shoulder. I wanted it over quick, and so I closed my eyes and thought about money and fast cars and how damn good my hair must have looked, which did the trick, so to speak.

She even took the condom with her when she left. I had dropped into the ashtray beside the futon afterwards, and I remember liking the way it ruined the quaint charm of this place.

Murasaki told me she was clean; I didn't need to wear one.

I told her I didn't trust her. I told her she had already lied to me about her name and about her age, and so why wouldn't she lie about her rotten cunt, too.

But I think what I really meant to tell her was that I like the feeling of rubber.

I think, if I could have, I would have put on latex gloves before pawing her perfect breasts.  
My clothes are folded neatly on a low table, and I shake them out and pull them on again. Suit, shirt, tie, vest, trench coat… I'm overdressed for a cigarette break, but it makes me the same inky black as Kokakurou's gardens at night.

I put on my watch, my cufflinks… but I hesitate before I reach for the wedding ring. Against the dark tabletop, it makes a perfect little circle of platinum. A zero, a cipher. Empty and without meaning.

When I slide back the panel and step into the hall, it's at the same moment that Kurauchi is leaving the room beside mine. He's left his suit coat somewhere in the shadows of his room, and his tie is loose at the throat. I must have woken him from a very sound sleep.

"It's all right." I pat the coat pocket over my heart. "I just want a cigarette."

"I'll come with you."

"You don't smoke."

"Yes, but…" His expression does something I can't quite make out in the darkness. "For company."

"Protection, you mean?"

"No." He shakes his head, only once. "Hirose…"

"It's unnecessary." I turn on my heels. "Go back to bed."

The night air isn't so cold that it stings, nor is the wind so strong that it blows out my match before I can touch it to the end of my cigarette. The gardens here always smell as if it's just rained, and I wonder if Mr. Mibu planned it that way. I must admit he is clever, that man.

And what, then, am I to make of the sound of slow footsteps on the dirt path? What indeed, when it's long past the time when the last patron should have retired to his room and I should have these gardens to myself?

I turn, and the footsteps grind to a halt.

"Nanjo-san?" says a voice so unpleasantly familiar that I bite down on my cigarette, almost hard enough to shear the filter off.

It's not until he laughs that I finish the job. The cigarette slips away, spiraling to the ground less like a shooting star and more like a 747 with three engines in flames. It winks at me once, there amidst the stones of the path, and then I grind it out beneath my foot.

"What a surprise, meeting you here," he says in the voice vipers use to lure their prey to them. But I have no intention of being eaten alive. "Are you enjoying the accommodations?"

I know I ought to leave, but I've already made the mistake of meeting that slate gray eye – the only one he lets me see through his hair – and I'm frozen to the spot. The chill in his gaze has turned my blood to ice.

Hypnosis is my first thought. My next is, Don't be stupid, Hirose.

"Boring," I say. "I find them insufferably boring."

"Oh?" A silver eyebrow twitches. "Then why are you here?"

"Because it is expected of me."

"The burden of wealth, I see." He makes two cigarettes appear in his right hand, keeps one for himself and offers the other to me. To my annoyance, I can smell the faint spice of his aftershave when I pluck the cigarette from between his fingers.

"Muraki. You need to leave."  
It's a ridiculous thing to say, because he's already swaying closer so he can hold a silver lighter to the tip of my cigarette. The hem of his coat brushes fleetingly against my ankle, and the flame casts a photonegative of shadows over his face.

"Do I?" he says. "My apologies."

His words send clouds of smoke into the night air. "It came as quite a relief to hear that your brother has made a recovery. I did say it would take a miracle, didn't I?"

"I never believed you. Koji is stronger than you can imagine."

"Or perhaps he is just luckier?" Muraki sighs.

"No. He's most certainly not lucky at all."

"A shame," Muraki says, looking up at the moon. "A shame about your father, as well. He has finally passed on."

"He was never very lucky, either."

Muraki just shrugs. "The king is dead. Long live the king."

A silence then, one long enough for me to realize that if he kisses me again right now, his mouth will taste pleasantly of tobacco and toothpaste. My own will only taste of the whore I've just used.

If he kisses me again, in this garden that always smells of fresh rain, under this moon so heavy on the horizon that it looks like a plaster model, I will most likely let him. If he comes toward me, dressed in white like a wraith, I'll let him tangle his hands in my hair to pull me down. I'll let him push himself against me, so close that I can feel the muscles in his stomach winding tight with arousal.

And after he kisses me… Well, I haven't thought that far ahead.

"Shall I be honest with you?" he asks abruptly.

Though I very much doubt that he will be, and perhaps that he even can be, I nod. "I think I would like that very much, Doctor."

"Hospital work does not suit me," he says as he steps closer, letting his cigarette fall behind him like the lives he undoubtedly leaves broken in his wake. "I need a more specialized sort of employment."

"What do you expect me to do about that?" I hold my ground as he comes to me, and I'm not sure why. I know already that he doesn't bluff.

"If I am not mistaken, Nanjo-san, you are in need of someone who can keep secrets." He smiles without showing any teeth. "And I am quite skilled at that. My work at present will soon begin to tire me."

I know he's already tired, for I've noticed the dark circles under his eyes from too many sleepless nights. He tries to cover them with makeup, like a woman would, and in a few years, he'll be using the same stuff to cover the faint scars left by a facelift. But sensuality is just another weapon to him, another gun in his arsenal. And while his intellect is sharp as a scalpel, his beauty he wields like a blunt object. He uses it to make cracks in the surface. Only after that can he use his finer tools to widen the gaps.

"Am I to understand that you're asking for a job?" I blow a breath of smoke in his direction, and for a few seconds it serves as a shield.

"I assure you, I am skilled in many things. Not just being discreet."

There's a very slight chance that he's not lying. I know he has shown discretion so far, because I have not had to dispel any nasty rumors that, three months ago, this man knelt between my legs and his mouth soaked all the resistance out of me.

"Your credentials speak well for you," I say. "You graduated first in your class from Shion University."

He smiles, flattered and embarrassed. "You looked me up."

"I did."

"Just as well." And his smile does not waver. "I looked you up as well."

I'm not particularly worried about that. The worst he could have found about me would be things he already knows.

"Perhaps," he says. "This means we can come to an understanding."

The smokescreen between us is gone, and I have forgotten to conjure another. He steps forward again, so close that, when he speaks, I can feel the heat of each word on my throat.

"Perhaps it does," I say.

And, like the cigarettes before, a business card appears suddenly in his hand. He reaches up, taps the corner once against my lips, and follows it with a kiss. The kind of searing, wet kiss that I've been expecting all night. Expecting, back in my room while Murasaki's nails carved eight crescent moons into the backs of my shoulders; expecting, even while I knelt on the tatami, sipping bitter tea and listening to Takatori and Kawabata talk politics.

His lips leave mine, and I feel my body wind up, tensing in anticipation of his touch.

But his graceful pickpocket fingers only slip the card into the inside pocket of my coat. He must feel the little bottle of pills there, yet he doesn't seem to care.

It's strange, but I don't seem to care either.

"My home number is on there," he whispers. It's odd, to hear him conduct business as though it's pillow talk. "Call me any time this week."

He steps back, turning away, and I take the card out and look at it. Numbly, I realize that the words – 'Muraki Kazutaka', in a sweeping black script - have a meaning. Something more than a turned back and a coat that sounds like the beating of white wings, growing distant as he walks away.

"Muraki…"

He glances back, and that cool smile has returned. "Yes? Was there something else you wanted?"  
I take a deep breath, and when I exhale it scatters the last of his kiss from my lips like ashes. "Is this a Tokyo number?"

For a moment, his smile wavers, and when it returns there's something different about it. It's shakier, as though I've found something faulty in the foundation. "Yes. How forgetful of me. I should have written it down."

He turns away again, and I don't know if he looks back, because I don't watch him leave.


	4. Chapter 4

"Really, Nanjo-san, you're going to have to try to stop squirming."

I know he's telling me for my own good, but when a man like Muraki comes at you with a sharp object, it becomes very difficult to keep still.

When you've been stripped of half your clothes, and you're flat on your back in bed; when he's kneeling over you with one hand on your shoulder to pin you in place… That doesn't help matters much.

"I don't squirm. You're the one who wouldn't give me the painkillers I asked for."

The wad of kitchen towels he has clamped over the hole in my side is starting to stain red. He holds it with one hand, threads a needle with the other and with his teeth. Nearby, an IV trails blood into the bend of my arm, and my veins draw at it hungrily. "I did give you painkillers. Any more right now would be lethal."

"I told you, I have a very high tolerance."

"If that's the way you feel about it, perhaps I could just take you to the hospital. There, at least, they'd have proper equipment."

"No," I say, and it's impossible to keep my voice from rising. "Here is just fine. I don't want to go to the hospital. I…"

"I know," he says. "I know. You want it kept out of the papers. A charming enigma as always, Nanjo-san."

His eyes flick up to mine. "Or perhaps you were just looking for an excuse to spend the evening with me, alone in your bedroom."

I don't find that funny.

"I don't know what you're so worried about," I say. My eyes follow his hand as he lifts the threaded needle, holds it over a candle flame to sterilize it. "If I die, you won't be held responsible."

His expression softens a little, and he surprises me once again: he has a smile that's not completely hideous.

"What are you smirking about?" I say. "I'm not actually going to die."

His smile disappears the instant he becomes conscious of its existence. They call that psychology of awareness. They call what I have a lateral puncture wound to the abdomen. They call it massive blood loss.

They call it just what I deserve.

And Muraki says, "Don't bite your tongue." Then he lifts the kitchen towels away.

A little mouthful of blood spits out of the wound, splattering the white bed sheets, the white wall, like a field of roses in bloom.

"Muraki!"

"Calm down." He lowers the needle. I've never had stitches before, and so I'm not sure what I expected. A pinch, I suppose, a little nip.

But what I get feels more like a pulse of electricity as the needle goes in, agony so hot he must be able to see it. Snaking red and white lightning under my skin, racing from my hip up to my shoulder. And then he pulls the thread tight, and I have to remind myself that there's no way I can be turned inside out through a hole in my side, no matter what it feels like he's trying to do to me.

"Breathe," he says, as he pushes the needle in again.

Pain like this affects the way you think. In my mind, I can hear myself say very clearly, 'Muraki, can you perhaps tell me what has become of my youngest brother?'

But what comes out of my mouth sounds more like, "Muraki… what? Koji… please… Damn you!"

He pauses in his work, the point of the needle jutting out of my side like the head of a sea monster on an ancient map. He doesn't answer right away, but maybe he doesn't need to.

"Is he dead?" My voice is hoarse, as though holding in my cries did as much damage as letting them all out would have. "If he's dead, you can tell me. I saw what he did, and so I know better than to hope otherwise. I've been expecting…"

"Nanjo-san." He says my name sharply, as though to wake me from a dream. As though I were only sleeping.

"He's not dead." Then he sighs. "Not that I know of. He's just… gone."

"Gone?" I say it again, to be sure my foggy, misfiring mind isn't interpreting that word wrong. "What do you mean? Muraki, he…"

"I know," he says. "I saw the blood. But he's not here."

I hear myself laugh, as if from a long way off. "That little fucking monster. He did this to me you know."

"So I heard," Muraki says.

"He was angry. I've never seen him so angry. The knife just slipped right in. But, you know, he never could let me have anything of my own. He never could be second best at anything."

"Stop talking," Muraki says. And as he slides the needle in again, I surrender a little shivering hiss of breath.

This time, he doesn't stop what he's doing, and he doesn't look up, but he reaches to comb the fingers of one hand through my hair. "I'm halfway done. My apologies, if it hurts."

"It's fine."

Before he can pull his hand away, I reach up to pin it against the side of my face. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's because he's already seen so much of me, and it doesn't seem worth it to keep anything from him now. Maybe later, I'll just tell myself I wasn't thinking clearly.

"Koji," I say. Muraki's skin is usually cool to the touch, but this time it's like ice. "My brother isn't mad. He's just… angry. It's not the same."

"I know." I can't see his eyes, but I don't need to, to understand exactly what he's talking about. "It was you, wasn't it?"

"Me?" I can feel my hold on his hand go slack, and I let it fall. "You think I would try to kill my own brother?"

He shrugs. "Is that so strange?"

"I'm trying to protect him." But I've said that so many times, it's like a declaration of love; it's lost all its meaning. "From everyone who wants to hurt him. Even himself."

"I see."

"No, you don't."

I'm telling him things I never thought I would say to anyone. Perhaps I want him to ruin me. He could, with what he knows, and I think he would if he thought I was useless to him.

God, my father used to say, just runs a tab and kills us when we stop turning a profit.

Contrary to what he might think, Muraki is no god. But I've told him things I couldn't tell Akihito, and I couldn't tell Kaoruko, and I certainly couldn't tell Kurauchi…

And even now my throat aches, dryly, to tell him more.

"Listen," I say.

"Later," he replies. "When I'm finished."

"No." I'd touch his hand to still it, but I don't really want him to stop. I’m still bleeding. The truth isn't worth dying for. Not this truth.

"Listen."

He glances up, and there's something faint behind the cold steel of his eye. "Then speak, Nanjo-san. I'll listen."

How strange, that it comes as a relief to hear him say that. My head falls back against the pillows, and I'm still beneath his hands. It's not as difficult as I had thought it would be.  
"We were younger…" And I have to stop myself to laugh. Bitter laughter, like wine from a bad vintage, or aspirin when you let it dissolve in your mouth.

He'll laugh, too, before I'm done.

"If he were here, I could keep him safe. None of us asked to be born into this fucked-up family."

Muraki glances up at that, and I don't care. However bad I look to him right now, it's not even a fraction of how I feel and I'll consider that a victory. I want to stop, but I keep talking, as if my lips are the only thing the morphine has numbed.

"My father named Koji his successor, you know. He was a man governed by tradition. Things like that still mean something in our family. And he gave Koji everything I worked for. Just like that, like he never went away. Like he never left us. My brother took everything that should have been mine. It's always been like that with us."

I pause to swallow the bile in the back of my throat. "And all I thought was that I'd take something that was his. He was supposed to come back, then."

"Nanjo-san." Muraki sighs, shaking his head. "I apologize. I don't understand what you mean."

"You don't need to. Just tell me…"

Tell me I had no other choice, that's what I want to say. I want to say, Koji is keeping a lover, and that's keeping him from coming home, where he belongs. And all I wanted was to warn that boy, Izumi, not to get involved. And what I didn't want, was for his voice to make me shiver the way it did when he cried for me to stop. For the taste of his mouth and of his skin to infect me the way it has, like a slow poison.

"Just tell me, do you think we go to hell for the things we do? Or for the things we don't?"

He's quiet for a moment, and his gaze searches mine. He won't find anything there. My eyes are silver, like mirrors, and like his eyes. We will do nothing but reflect lies back at each other, for all eternity.

"Do you mean us, personally? Or was that a collective we?"

I open my mouth to respond, but I never get a chance to. He pulls the stitches in my side tight, and all that comes out is startled little yelp. He ties the thread off, cuts it with a scalpel. "It's going to leave a scar."

"What doesn't?"

"Indeed." His fingers flick through my hair, lifting it out of my eyes. "You look dreadful. I'm nearly done." From somewhere next to the bed, he lifts a brown vial. When he uncaps it, I smell the bitterness of iodine.

"It's going to hurt," he says.

"I can only imagine," I reply.

The hand on my hair grows tight all at once, holding me still as his mouth finds mine. His lips are so familiar now that I don't bother fighting. I can learn to live with a lot of things; certainly, with these cold, intermittent kisses…

And then, he upends the bottle of iodine over the fresh stitches.

The pain isn't immediate, and that only makes it worse. I have time to tense up like the driver of a crashing car, and then a flash fire of agony spreads out of the hole in my side. Muraki closes his eyes, keeps his mouth pressed to mine and smothers the cries as they spill from my lips. He drinks them, like a vampire.

When the searing heat has faded enough that I feel as if I could regain some dignity, Muraki pushes back to his knees.

"Asshole…" My voice is quiet, and dry as a desert by night.

"That difficult part is over, Nanjo-san," he says as he tapes gauze over the stitches. "Now, all you need to do is rest."

"I'm tired…" I hear myself murmur. But I'm not sure if that's supposed to be an agreement. "Will you stay here, while I'm asleep?"

"That will cost you overtime."

"And how much is overtime."

He smiles. "More than I'm worth."

And I realize too late that the sheets beneath me are soaked in blood, and that when I open my eyes next it will be dried, congealed blood, which will most certainly be an unpleasant thing to wake to.

But I don't have time to say more, before letting myself go down, into the darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

I'm sure that I've only dozed off for a few moments, but when I open my eyes again, the sheets have been changed. More than that, the room has been changed. I slide my hand down my side, and realize my bandages have been changed too. I'm the only thing that's still the same.

Maybe that's not quite true.

There's a little rustle of movement beside the bed I'm laying on. "Aki?" I murmur. There is no one else who would have been watching over me while I slept… How humiliating that sounds.

"No, Nanjo-san. He's gone to rest. You only just missed him."

Muraki sets down his book, and leans closer. He picks up my glasses from the little table next to the bed and slips them on for me.

"You…?" I'd sound surprised if my voice was anything more than a harsh whisper. "What do you want?"

He sits on the bed beside me. He's careful about it, but the movement of the mattress makes me wince.

"You asked me to stay," he says. "And if you change your mind now, I'm not refunding your overtime pay."

"How long has it been?"

"Almost a full day. I'm glad you're awake, actually. Akihito wouldn't stop pestering me. He's very fond of you, that boy. What a faithful brother—"

"Shut up, Muraki!" That came out sharp, and I regret it at once. It makes me cough, makes my dry throat burn.

"Calm yourself." He slides an arm behind my shoulders, lifting me from the pillows. There's something hesitant about the way he moves – indeed, almost wary - and that's when I realize… I set him on edge. I have to laugh at that, even though it comes out as a harsh gasp for breath.

"Calm down," he says again, and lifts a bottle of water to my lips.

"I can—" The touch of water on my lips washes away all my words. He says it's only been a day, but it might as well have been years. It seems I can feel that first drink in every cell of my body.

Muraki tilts the water bottle back, and I reach up, snatching it out of his hand. Sitting up, it turns out, isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. It's staying there that gives me a little trouble. A low growl of pain flares in my side, but if I put the wall at my back I can bear it.

"That's not necessary." I raise the water to my lips, just to prove that I can.

Muraki doesn't seem impressed. "As you wish, Nanjo-san."

He returns to his chair, crossing his legs delicately at the knee, and retrieving his book. "Try to get some more rest."

As though I could sleep, with him sitting there sulking like that. It's undignified.

Lying back down seems like it might be more trouble than it's worth at the moment, so I just slump against the wall. I can't see the spine of his book from here, but he didn't get it from my library. I don't have any cheap paperbacks like that. I don't much care for people who bring books wherever they go…

"What are you reading?"

He glances at me over the top of the novel; his glasses slip down his nose, just a little. "It's Joyce. _Ulysses_. Have you read it?"

"No." The last time I read a piece of fiction was when I was eight. "Is it good?"

"Mm." He closes the book, and sets it aside. Almost too eager for a distraction. "Do you want the truth? Or the answer I've prepared for people who ask me if it's good?"

"Why don't you start with the truth."

"It's dreadful." And the way he laughs when he says that, I can't help but laugh a little myself. "Absolutely dreadful."

My hand moves over the sheets, clawing them up into little ranges and canyons. And it's just like him to assume I meant it as an invitation.

He puts the book aside, and returns to sit next to me once more.

"Thank you," I say, without looking at him. "For attending to me."

He leans in, and my lips part beneath his kiss.

I suppose he means for that to be an answer. His hand moves to cup the back of my neck, and I turn to face him. Shifting into a deeper kiss, the hot velvet of his mouth.

If my wound would only start to throb again, I would have an excuse to push him away. But he's… perhaps gentle is the wrong word. He's careful, as he sets a hand on my knee, draws it up my thigh. He's cautious, as he slides around to kneel across my lap.

"What do you think?" he murmurs between kisses so deep I can feel the sharp ivory of his teeth cutting into my lips. "Have you given in yet?"

"Not a chance."

And I mean it, even as I tilt my chin up to give Muraki access to my throat; even as my hands slide under his coat and up his shapely back.

"I didn't think so." His mouth closes around the side of my neck like a predator; his tongue traces the path of a vein beneath my skin. His hands do something insufferably clever down between my legs, and my cock twitches eagerly in response.

It's hard not to have a little grudging respect for someone who can still do this, in spite of all the setbacks. I really have been a stubborn tease. But after the last few days, I'm finding it suddenly difficult to keep up a pace like that. I'm finding it difficult to keep up a great many pretenses, too.

Izumi would have been perfect, you know. Perfect, if not for his sobs.

I take Muraki's hands between mine, guiding them to the top button of my pants.

"I am curious…" My voice comes as a soft, hot breath, spilled against the damp skin of his temple. "As to whether or not you have been worth waiting for."

He hesitates a moment, leaning back on his knees so our eyes meet. Cold gray upon cold gray.

"As I understand it," he says at last, as those long delicate fingers tug at buttons and zipper, laying the front of my pants open, "It would be very bad for my health, to disappoint you."

A hand, cool as latex, closes around my cock, stroking it to hardness.

He sways forward, until his forehead is pressed against mine. It seems a ridiculously intimate gesture, even with his hands already twined around me. I struggle to remember the last time I let someone rest against me like that.

Akihito is the name that comes to mind, but it's not the one I want to think about right now.  
Muraki's mouth tastes coppery metallic like blood, and that makes him hard to ignore. Easy to let distract me. Only when he's certain that I am completely enmeshed within him does he pull back, slip away from me to kneel beside the bed.

His hands draw me forward. "Come here. You can lean against me."

I wouldn't lean against him if I only had one goddamn leg left. But I do move closer, to the edge of the bed; I rest my weight back on my palms. His eyes meet mine over the rise of my body, and he doesn't look away as he leans in, as his tongue flicks out to slide along the underside of my cock.

No one has ever done that before. Held my gaze so I had nowhere to look, save at what is being done to me. Suddenly, there are no crisp bills or eight cylinder engines to think about. No matter how good my hair looks, it's not good enough.

There's nothing, but the lingering warmth of his mouth and the cool air he breathes over the dampness he's just created on my skin. The silk sheets knotted beneath my fingers as my hands curl into fists. My mind wrings new words – adjectives and adverbs - out of the syllables of his name, because it's the only way I have to describe the Muraki-ness of the situation. How Muraki-esque things have become.

His lips part, and he tears his eyes away with what I've surely mistaken for a hint of hesitation, to slip his mouth over me. I can see the muscles at the sides of his throat relax as he takes me in with one quick breath.

For a moment, I'm afraid nothing will ever break the silence.

Finally, something does. A quiet, wordless cry in a voice that, at first, I don't even recognize as my own. My voice doesn't waver around the edges like that. My voice doesn't pitch strangely at every silly little thing someone does with their mouth. My voice does not have to be stifled with one hand pressed to my lips, teeth digging into the second knuckle of my index finger.

I'm helpless to look away.

The muscles at the back of his throat work around me in a slow rhythm. He coils around me, constricting and relaxing, winding and unwinding to match the steady pulse of blood at my temples. He doesn't move much; doesn't bob his head or thrash around. He doesn't need to. Everything happens just under the surface.

I don't know him well enough to say whether or not that's just like him.

One of his hands slips away from my thigh and flutters downward like a leaf cut loose from a tree. If he knows that I'm still watching him, then he's not very subtle about it; perhaps he doesn't know. Hasn't figured out yet that I can't tear my eyes away from him anymore than I could my body.

And even as he coaxes a strangled little moan from me, he's reaching down to brush two fingertips over himself through the front of his pants. He seems to hesitate a moment, then his hand wavers and he slides it between his thighs. I catch the little shiver that runs through him only because I know what I'm looking for.

I realize then that he's not the only one with power here. He's as captivated as I am.  
Maybe that is a bit too ambitious. He may be turned on, but my own arousal is reaching critical mass, ground zero. A white-hot molten core deep in my body.

But he is fascinating, and I'm still watching him while I try to choke back a moan, as my body convulses once with release and then I shudder. Tremble, as my arms give out and I lean forward to rest against his shoulder, just like I swore I wouldn't.

"Muraki…"

He drags his mouth over me slowly as he pulls back, taking most of the mess with him. His jaw tightens a little, and he swallows.

No one has ever swallowed my come before.

"That was, perhaps, not the best thing for your condition." His lips quirk into a little smile, and he reaches to push my glasses back up my nose. It's not like any expression I've ever seen on him before.

"I'm fine. It doesn't hurt."

He pushes to his feet, and I find my eyes drawn to the place where he teased himself with his fingertips. Through his clothes, I can't tell if he's still hard. When he reaches out to take my shoulders and steady me, I brush a hand up the inside of his left thigh. Just to satisfy my curiosity.

The next breath he draws is sharp and startled. I slide the backs of my fingers over him, and his hips move, just slightly.

"What about you? Does this hurt?"

"It's agony, Nanjo-san."

As he pushes me back to the bed, I curl my fingers around his tie. He doesn't resist much, but he's very careful as he crawls over me. He edges around my stitches like he would a sleeping dog.

I can't help but laugh, as I reach up to remove his glasses for him. "How delicate do you think I am?"

"I would not wish to injure my most esteemed patient."

"Nor would I wish to displease any man I allow near me while I sleep."

I crook one leg, pushing my thigh up between his. Wiry muscle flexes against me as he coils back, breathing a little sigh.

When he wraps his arms around my shoulders, I can smell the musk of his aftershave, the same as always, but beneath it I catch a faint whiff sweat and anticipation on his skin. He presses himself against my hipbone, grinding down. His body reverberates with a little moan, like a cat's purr.

He's still dressed, and I am mostly not. But the fabrics he wears are as warm and soft and slippery as skin. His lips meet mine, and I can still taste myself on the inside of his mouth.

It's not as bad as you might think.

For what feels like a long time, he's the only thing that moves. His hips against mine, beneath my hands. His mouth, sucking kisses from mine until we're both out of breath.

There's something damp under my hand, and it takes me a moment to realize that I've torn my wound open again, and blood has soaked through my bandages.

That probably means I ought to stop him, but his breath is already coming in soft sighs. His movements are less controlled than they were when we began. I'm still debating the best way to broach the subject, when he turns his face against my shoulder and cries out sharply.

He shifts a few times, restlessly, and then all the strength seems to rush out of him.

He murmurs wordlessly, and lifts a hand to inspect the blood staining his fingertips. "How careless of me."

His voice is a little rougher than normal, but other than that there's nothing different about him. Strange, when I feel that I'm changed enough for both of us.

He leans back, calmly replacing his glasses, and begins to unwind my bandages. From a bag beside the bed, he pulls fresh gauze and begins to tape up my side. "The stitches are holding. Just be still, and the bleeding will stop soon."

"Muraki…"

"Mm?" He glances up from his work, tilting his head slightly so that his hair falls not quite away from his face. He leans in; I think at first that he means to kiss me, and so I tilt my chin back a little.

But he presses his lips to my ear. "I know a secret about you, Nanjo-san."

"And what might that be?"

His voice is soft, a hot breath of air against my cheek. "You like boys better than girls."

"That's…" I push him back. "That's disgraceful. What nonsense."

And he laughs. Which should serve only to make me angry, but instead I feel heat building behind my cheeks. I'll never forgive him for making me blush.

"What an odd reaction. Really, Nanjo-san. A worldly, educated man like you? I shouldn't have to tell you this." He slides the backs of his fingers over my cheek. "It's all right. There's no reason to be ashamed."

"But I'm not—"

"You are. But I promised you discretion when I came to work for you, didn't I?" He touches my cheek again, so I have no choice but to turn back to face him.

"Perhaps," he says. "I could match your secret with one of my own."

"I don't know what about you could possibly interest me."

He arches his back, and stretches out on the bed beside me. "It's something you will never guess, I assure you."

Carelessly, one of his hands slips into mine. And, like when he swallowed earlier, I realize that no one has ever held my hand before, either. His voice is quiet, but not so quiet that I cannot tell that he's lucid.

"You see," he says. "I'm not entirely human. Don't say anything yet. Allow me to explain. In recent years, I have found certain latent abilities within myself beginning to awaken. I am able to absorb stray energies and redirect them as I see fit. I won't bore you with the details; however, I believe this talent was passed down to me genetically. Along with certain other traits. This hair, these eyes, colors like this don't occur naturally."

His hand tightens around mine, convulsively. "Do you understand what I am saying to you, Nanjo-san?"

I don't know what to do, so I tell him what he wants to hear. "You think that I'm like you. One of this… supernatural bloodline."

"Yes." He moves suddenly, rolling over on top of me and pinning my shoulders to the mattress. There is a feral gleam in his eyes. He's quite obviously mad - dangerous and deluded – but it never occurs to me to push him away. "It makes sense. You feel it, don't you? Sometimes, it seems as though your senses are heightened. As though you perceive things that other people do not. Sometimes, it's so strong that you feel your mind is going to give way beneath it…"

And what happens next, I will never tell anyone. What happens next, I will, for my own sake, have to force myself to forget. Because what happens next is, for just a moment, what he says seems to ring true. It tears through all the logic and the rationality, and it make sense to me. It's like he's looking through me just then, like I'm not there at all.

I raise one hand towards him. I think, for an instant, that it's going to be to throw my arm around his neck, to pull him down and embrace him, as they say, like a brother.

Instead, my hand snaps around his throat.

His eyes widen. I sit up, forcing him back to his knees. I must be squeezing very hard, because he lifts two fingers to rest against the inside of my wrist.

I find myself wondering if he will make a beautiful corpse.

"You need to get out of my bed."

He nods, swinging one leg over so his foot brushes the carpet. I let him go, and he pushes to his feet. "Nanjo-san…"

"You're mad, aren't you? I'm embarrassed for you."

He rubs at his throat. "And if I can give you proof of what I've said?"

"Then I still won't believe it, because it's nonsense."

He lowers his gaze. At first I think he regrets what he's said, but then I realize… No, he's only laughing at me. "As you wish, Nanjo-san. Perhaps it would be best if I took my leave of you for the time being. You have had a trying day."

He gathers his bag of medical supplies, sets his book inside it on top. I watch him closely, to make sure he leaves nothing of himself behind.


	6. Chapter 6

"Nanjo Hirose…"

All week, I've been turning that name over in my mind like a cryptogram. It's to be expected that it come to the surface like this eventually.

Oriya glances up at me, his pipe slanting from the corner or his mouth. "Him again? It's not like you to maintain an interest for so long."

"Mm, no, it's nothing like that, I assure you."

"I'll bet." The way he said that would have been quite irritating, were it anyone but him. Anywhere but this. "So tell me, Muraki, has he scattered his secrets like cherry blossoms at your feet yet?"

That makes me laugh a little. The last time I laughed, Nanjo Hirose's arms were looped around my waist and my lips still tasted of him. I shouldn't remember it now, but my laughter then sounded nothing like it does now. "His DNA test speaks to me like a volume of poetry."

Incidentally, there is something deliciously ironic to me about the way I took the sample for the test from the inside of my own mouth. Perhaps it would have been less theatrical to simply draw some blood, but by the time it occurred to me Nanjo-san had lost more than enough of that. Spilling family blood is always more troublesome than you would expect, as Orestes would attest.

Who, I wonder, will be the first to summon the Furies down upon the Nanjo house?

"Indeed?" Oriya is trying terribly hard to sound uninterested, and, to his credit, he's nearly succeeding. "Is it everything you hoped for?"

"All three of the Nanjos are very remarkable men, Oriya. However…"

He raises an eyebrow. "However?"

"However, they are not what I have been seeking. Anything inhuman is buried too deeply in the generations for me to trace."

"Such a shame." Oriya shakes his head so long hair falls in front of his eyes. "And where does that leave you?"

"Where I began."

"Not quite."

"Oh?"

"No. If you want things to go back to the way they were, then you'll have to forget about Nanjo Hirose."

That is one of the stranger things I can remember him saying to me. It's a little worrisome. "It's very sweet of you to be concerned, Oriya, but…"

"He has troubles of his own, Muraki. And he will draw you in."

"Then he shall find me the Scylla to his Charybdis."

Oriya raises an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"

"They were monsters." The word comes out as a sigh. "That's all."

He looks away, out over the courtyard, and as he's turned from me the floodlights hidden in the trees and tucked away in the grass wink out. All at once, so the color is washed away, leaving the gardens as monochrome as a dream.

It's midnight. The lights always go out promptly at midnight.

"It doesn't really matter, though."

"Doesn't it?" There's a little skepticism in his voice. "You always say that when you don't want to take my advice. When it isn't convenient for you."

I had not framed it in those terms before, but I know that he's right. "Duly noted," I tell him.

I stand. Circle closer, like a predator, to kneel beside him. Against the darkness of the gardens, the indigo of his robes is very vibrant.

I never dream in colors that bright.

"Did you need something?" He brushes black hair from his face with one hand, presenting the side of his throat to me. None too subtle tonight, is he? And I find myself thinking that his rough palms would be almost like the hands I really want on me, but nothing else about him would even come close.

I run my fingers up his arm, crushing the silk of his haori beneath them as though I could wring the smell of familiar tobacco from it. "Nanjo-san…"

He smiles. The expression doesn't touch his eyes. "No. I'm Oriya."

He's rarely ever so cute with me.

I kiss him on the corner of the mouth, a little reward for his troubles, and I say, "He was never afraid of me. I think that was what I noticed first."

Oriya sighs, hair slipping again in front of his face, like a portcullis crashing down between us. "You don't have to explain yourself to me. Especially not with poor excuses like that."

"Excuse?" I find myself pulling away from him a little. "It's not an excuse. He fascinates me."

"I know he does." Oriya turns to face me, shaking his hair back again. He sets his hand on my jaw, holding my eyes with his, like he used to do when we were much younger and he would explain a geometry problem or a grammatical rule to me. "And so it's an excuse."

He shakes his head. "Honestly, Muraki, if all you wanted was someone who wasn't afraid of you, you'd be here with me."

"I am with you."

"Are you?" This time his smile is a little less bitter, a little more resigned. "It's getting harder to tell these days."

"Oh? Perhaps I ought to reassert my presence."

Coolly, he watches me for a moment; silk hisses as he gets to his feet.

I rise to meet him, taking one of his hands between mine, pressing my palm against his so I can feel the places on his skin that have been worn into scales by the hilt of his katana.

"Muraki," he says quietly. "I trust, in the end, you'll do what's best."

I tilt my head against his shoulder. My hands guide his down between our bodies. I'll be damned if I spend another moment snagged on the memory of Nanjo Hirose.


	7. Chapter 7

The next time I'm in Kyoto, I spend the night at Kokakurou. I don't want to, but there really aren't any other options for a man like me.

For a Nanjo.

After dinner, I slip away without taking a girl. Maybe that means I'm neglecting my duties. I hope young Master Oriya doesn't find out. He'd take it personally.

But the strangest thing has happened over the past few weeks: My interest in women is nonexistent. My interest in anyone, besides Muraki Kazutaka.

Alone in one of Kokakurou's traditional rooms, I light a cigarette and try to forget silken hands, a hot mouth pressed over mine, mad talk of demons and curses and James Joyce. And I am starting to forget, truly, when I hear footsteps in the hall. I'm forgetting when they stop in front of the door to my room and there's a light knock on the edge of the panel.

It must be Kurauchi, but he never lets himself in without a word from me.

And by now the panel is sliding back.

And everything I've been forgetting comes back all at once, like the ground rushing toward you in the moments between when you jump and when you hit bottom.

"Good evening," Muraki says as though he has every right to be there in my doorway, his tie and collar loose, the moonlight silver upon the silver of his hair.

"Nanjo-san…" He hesitates a moment. It's not like him, and that makes it more pronounced. I can almost hear the muscles at the back of his throat working helplessly as he searches for words.

It's even less like him to have come without a speech already prepared.

Whether he means to or not, he gives me time to collect my thoughts. "What the hell are you doing here, Muraki?"

"Visiting you in exile." He comes inside, sliding the door closed behind him. He's smirking, but there's no force behind the expression. He has just adopted it out of routine, like a nervous habit.

He kneels opposite me on the tatami, very near, and he says, "Are you not enjoying the accommodations?"

"I'm enjoying them very much." I mean to punctuate the next words with a sharp glare, but I can't bring myself to look at him. "I like the solitude."

"Of course." He reaches out, touching the back of my hand so tenderly that I know he must be planning something horrible. "Nanjo-san, listen… Do you remember what we spoke about before?"

"Muraki, stop. I like you much better when I can imagine that you're not a raving lunatic."

He stiffens a little. I can feel it because his hand still rests over mine, right where I've let it remain. "I was wrong, you know. I ran a DNA test, and I was mistaken about you. About your blood."

"What a surprise," I say. "Muraki…"

Then I only sigh, and shake my head, because I don't really know what to say to him. "How did you know I was here?"

"I have an anonymous source."

"Oriya?"

He smiles, just a little. "Perhaps. Don't worry, Nanjo-san, he isn't bothered that you didn't take a girl after dinner."

He's turned so I can't see anything but a little triangle of throat beneath the hair that falls over his face. Not for the first time, I wonder what he's so desperate to hide. I'm quiet a while, waiting for him to look at me, which he never does. The silence goes on long enough to become uncomfortable.

"Are you really that disappointed?" I say at a last.

"Disappointed that you didn't fuck one of Oriya's girls?" He laughs. "I can't say that I am disappointed. Though I'm not really the jealous type, either."

"You know what I meant, Muraki. I haven't seen you in two months."

"I know. But I'm searching for something, Nanjo-san. And you may be many things, but you're not what I'm looking for."

I've never been dumped before, but even without much experience I'm confident that what I'm hearing is pretty high on the list of worst lines to preface a break-up. Still, I have the presence of mind to remember that I am Nanjo Hirose. No one dumps me.

"Then it's just as well," I say. "It saves me the trouble."

He glances up at me for the first time. "What?"

"If you aren't going to do the job for which I hired you, then I'll have to terminate your contract. That's just good business, Doctor."

His eye narrows a little, and then he laughs. "Are you firing me as your boyfriend?"

What I want to say next and what I do say are very different things. "Don't try to toy with me, Muraki. What the hell do you think this is?"

His lips twitch, and for a moment he almost looks hurt. As though, without even trying, I've   
found my way past all his defenses, past his impenetrable borders.

"The end," he murmurs. I watch him push away, and I watch him get to his feet. And I watch him turn away from me. "I think… it's the end, now."

It seems to take him hours to cross the floor. It was like that the first time, too, I think, when he crossed my little brother's hospital room to stand next to me. To kiss me.

That was almost eight months ago.

And in the back of my mind, softly, I hear my brother's voice. Koji's voice, rough with that ugly, mocking laugh he has.

 _Did you know you loved him then?_ my brother's voice asks me. _Have you figured it out at all? What kind of education were they giving you at your fancy American schools?_

Koji never did let me do anything the easy way.

By now, Muraki's at the door. I stand up quick, toss my cigarette in the ashtray and take a step after him. "Wait."

There's a moment when I think he's not going to look back, and I don't blame him. But then he turns, just a little, showing me the curve of his throat, the fall of his silver hair. "Now who is toying with whom, Nanjo-san?"

His hesitation encourages me, and I come forward, taking his arm. "Don't be so melodramatic. Come back inside."

"Why?"

As I draw him away, he slides the panel shut again. "Because…"

He turns back, leaning against me like he's anticipating a kiss.

I don't disappoint him.

As he leans away again to catch his breath, I sigh. "This is so fucking stupid."

"I know." He leans in again, giving me a kiss that pushes the rest into the background. "It isn't like you at all."

"Nor you." I wrap a hand around his tie, drawing him back inside. His hands flutter over the buttons of my suit coat. "What are we doing here?"

He laughs as he draws his hands down my chest, twin highways of heat over my bare skin. "I thought that was obvious, Nanjo-san."

"Call me Hirose."

The words were out before I knew they would be, and though Muraki looks surprised by them, I'm sure he's not nearly as shocked as I am.

"Why?" he asks.

"I don't know." Maybe it's because I hardly know him, but he's still closer to me than anyone else. "If you're only going to be here for tonight, it doesn't really matter, does it? Call me Hirose."

"Very well." He seems to think a moment, as though sounding out the syllables of the name. "Hirose. Is that more to your liking?"

"Yes."

I slip his glasses off his nose for him, fold them and put them away in the breast pocket of his coat. Without them, he looks younger. Pretty, instead of handsome, and I can see why he persists in wearing them. He lets me tug him over to the futon, and we slide down to it, a tangle of loosened suit coats and silk shirts and sensible solid-color ties. When I slip my hands beneath his clothing, I can feel sleek muscle, winding and unwinding, tensing and relaxing in a familiar rhythm of arousal.

I flick open his pants, and his erection presses into the hollow of my hand. For a moment, I can only stare and try to come up with the disgust my father would want me to feel. Then Muraki reaches down between our bodies, touching my wrist lightly with two fingers. When I look up, his expression is tight, anticipatory. "Hirose…"

This is all his fault. I know, because I would never have come up with something like this on my own. I'm an innocent victim in all this, a prisoner of war.

He's on top of me now, kneeling astride me with one leg on either side of my hips, and I catch his wrists before he can slither away and turn him over. He gasps as I flip him onto his stomach, shifting my weight over him to grind him down into the bedding.

"Oriya was right about you," he says, breathless.

"What did Oriya-san say about me?" I slide his pants down, far enough to reveal the tops of his shapely thighs.

"He called you unpredictable. At first I thought he just lacked imagination…"

I hold a hand to his mouth, and he slips his lips over one finger, drawing it into the hot dampness of his mouth.

"Now you know better." My voice doesn't sound the way I want it to; the roll of his tongue over my skin saps the will right out of me.

My finger slides from between his lips, wet and slick.

"I don't know," he confesses.

Everything he's ever told me up to this point might be a lie, but that I can be sure is the truth.

I trail the heel of my hand down his spine, and slip that single wet finger into him. He gasps, jerking back against me so I have to press my other hand to his shoulder to hold him still.

"Bastard…" he pants.

"Shut up."

For the first time all evening, I'm glad I'm staying here, in Kokakurou, where everything is provided for you. I shift my weight forward, pinning him, and with one hand I reach out and slide open the discreet little carved wooden box beside the futon. Inside, there's a little vial of oil; I make enough of a show of retrieving it, that I'm sure Muraki gets a good look.

I can't see his face; I think he just barely manages to keep from smiling.

I make myself slick with one hand, and keep the other pressed to the back of Muraki's neck. He struggles a little, not enough to break away from me, but if I relax my grip it will be. And I know he'll pull away if I give him the chance. But when I shift forward, pushing up against him, he stops squirming all at once.

"What have you done to me?" I say.

"I don't know." His hips shift subtly, just a little ripple of feverishly hot skin. "But after tonight, you won't have to worry about it anymore. I'll be gone."

"You shouldn't even be here now."

Then I arch forward, pushing into him, and he's the only hot pliant living thing left in the world.

He gasps my name. One of his hands claws at the outside of my thigh, the other arm is crooked against the futon and he uses it to leverage himself back against me.

It's no use trying to tell myself that he's not the best I've ever had. That anything will ever be as good as he is again. Even I can only make a lie stretch so far. All I can do is convince myself that it's his fault. It's him, not what he does to me. It's the way he seizes upon something fundamental in me that I always took for granted. The way he melts and re-forges, purges and purifies.

I slip my arm around his waist, pulling him up, back to lean against my shoulder. His hair almost parts around his face then

"Hirose…" One hand moves up to up my cheek, and the other falls over my wrist, guiding my arm down. He closes his fingers around mine, urging me to wrap my hand around his cock. I half stroke him, half let him thrust up against me with tight efficient jerks of his hips, until he twists his face against the side of my throat and breathes a soft moan.

There's a rush of heat over the back of my hand and my wrist, then the pulse of internal muscles draws my own climax from me a moment later. I fall back bracing myself on my palms; Muraki reaches back, winding his arms lazily around my neck and pooling his weight on my chest.

We wait a moment in silence, but it isn't long enough for me to decide what I want to do next.  
"Muraki. I…"

He laughs softly, turning slowly to kiss me. "You are a remarkable man, Hirose. Your brother is nothing compared to you."

It takes me a moment to realize that the heat flooding my face means I'm blushing. How strange. But not half as strange as what I do next: I don't turn away from him to hide it.  
I reach out instead, and slip a hand beneath the wing of silver hair that falls over his right eye. He flinches, so subtly that I can't see it, but I can feel the slight tremor that slides along his skin in the places we're still touching.

"What are you doing?" he murmurs.

"How bad can it be?"

He lets me slide his hair aside, tuck it behind his ear.

It's rather gauche to answer a rhetorical question, but I can feel my lips tilt up into the hint of a smile. "Not so bad at all."

He looks away, and I run my fingertips over the faint scar beneath his eye. "How did you lose it?"

"A fire. Many years ago."

"Oh? You didn't sell it to a demon? Have it purged by some arcane magic?"

He laughs, a soft breath of amusement and relief. "I am sorry to disappoint you. It was nothing so glamorous."

"A shame." I kiss him again, one more to remember, and then I pull away. We dress in silence, and I turn back to face him just as he finishes buttoning his coat.

"Goodbye, Muraki."

"Good night." He smiles, and flicks his hair back over his eye.

He goes to the door and lets himself out.


	8. Epilogue

And that was the last time I ever saw him. It's just as well; he was too high maintenance for me. He asked too much, and his demands were some of the most unreasonable I had ever encountered.

I'm lying, of course.

I'm used to impossible demands. As for Muraki, I would have given him anything he wanted, if he'd only asked me nicely.

But that's not the lie I mean.

I did see Muraki after that. It was months later, and by then Akihito was dead so I'm not certain it matters. Even now, I feel as though I was one man before that night, and I am another as I tell this now. But in the days after his death, things were different, still transitory. It was a week, two at the most, that lasted the millennia it takes continents to drift apart and resettle.

After it was over, I tried to fill in what I didn't remember. I could have asked Kurauchi; he saw everything, much to my embarrassment. But of late I've noticed a change in him. Or maybe I've only now realized something that's been there all along. I don't like the way he watches me anymore, like I'm a piece of crystal poised to break. I don't like the way that he seems perpetually ready to fly to my rescue.

It's not that I'm not grateful to him. That night, he led me into the parlor and constructed the story we would tell the police. It was simple, uncomplicated. It kept my hands clean and, and it exonerated Akihito. I like to think I could have done no better myself.

When the authorities came, they believed it. And they left us for the night.

It was then I finally lost consciousness.

***

"Hirose. Hirose. Hirose. _Hirose_!"

"Who…?"

I try not to move. My damn neck feels like it's broken.

It probably is broken.

Kurauchi is probably waking me up in the hospital to tell me that my neck is broken and I'll never move anything below my eyeballs again.

Only this isn't Kurauchi's voice.

I turn my head, and that at least rules out the broken neck, although it doesn't explain why I am most certainly hallucinating.

"Muraki?"

He looks up from the needle he's preparing.

Imagine that you've washed ashore on a desert island. Imagine that you spend ten years on that island, with nothing to drink the milky yellow sap from the cacti; with nothing to eat but locusts and scorpions. Then, imagine that one day, onto your island, someone drops fresh meat. Kobe beef, rare, still steaming and leaking rich red juice over the sand.

Imagine that, and you'll have some idea of how good that needle looks to me.

It doesn't hurt that it's Muraki holding it, either. Now I understand why they use lingerie models to sell sports cars.

"Hirose…" He shakes his head, and I find that I'm watching the spot where his face disappears behind his hair, as though it will be easier to catch a glimpse of it now that I know what I'm looking for.

"Or is it Nanjo-san now?" He sits on the edge of the bed beside me and holds up the needle.

"I don't know anymore…" I'm not sure if it's my voice that's slurred, or if it's everything else. "Muraki. What…?"

"What am I doing here?" He smiles. "Kurauchi called me. You didn't take my number out of your Rolodex. Should I be flattered?"

Actually, I had been trying to ask him what was in the syringe. But maybe it doesn't matter. Morphine, heroin, drain cleaner, lye… anything would be good enough right now.

"It only hurts for a moment," he says as he slides the needle into the bend of my arm. I can feel warmth crawl slowly towards my heart.

"You've been in shock," Muraki continues once the shot has been administered. "You're dehydrated, blood sugar is down. You're a mess. What happened, Hirose?"

I know. I remember everything, but I think that even if I wanted to tell him, I wouldn't have the words.

"Nothing. It was nothing."

"I see," he sighs, and then nudges me over a little, stretching out next to me. The bed isn't big. We have to lie close. "A charming enigma as always, Hirose."

"Since when do you have this kind of bedside manner?" My voice seems to pass through sandstorms and broken glass in the back of my throat; it sounds rough and shredded.

"I reserve it only for my best patients."

He takes my hand. He's laying so near me that I can't quite see his face; everything blurs together.

"Where did the bruises come from?" he asks abruptly.

"Bruises?"

Two of his fingertips glide over my left wrist.

"Not Koji…" he muses quietly, while, in the back of my mind something screams for me to stop him from seeing this through. But I can't do anything except watch him, and I feel faint pinpoints of heat behind my eyes. I won't cry. I'm dehydrated, like he says; I'll save the moisture.

His lips pull tight, and he says. "Akihito, then."

"Akihito is dead."

He blinks, startled. The mark of a man who doesn't surprise easily is that he doesn't know how to hide it when he is shocked. "That does explain a few things."

Before I can move to stop him, his arms are around me and I'm curled against his chest.  
"The shock," he says quietly. "You ought to stay warm."

Of course, it doesn't make me feel any better, but, how strange, I do feel for the first time as though, at some distant date – maybe years from now – I might begin to.

"Muraki…" When I breathe, I can smell cigarettes and flowery shampoo, and I realized that I've missed that. "If I asked you not to leave this time, would I be making a fool of myself?"

"Perhaps not a fool, but…"

"But you won't stay." I had expected nothing else from him, but, there in his arms, I permit myself a little pang of bitter disappointment.

"No," he says. "I will not."

"I know. You're still searching for something."

"No." I feel him sigh, soft and weary. "Not searching any longer."

"Your demon?"

It wasn't that long ago that saying something like that would have made me question what little sanity I had left. But now, it's not so strange, is it? I think I could begin to believe in demons, as long as I start with the one in whose shadow I have lived for the last sixteen years.

Muraki shakes his head. "Not quite. My little ghost."

"You believe in ghosts now?"

"There are more things in Heaven and Hell… Well, in Heaven, at least."

"Who is this ghost, then?"

"In truth?" Muraki sighs. "He's your replacement."

I feel the hollow sting of jealousy in the pit of my stomach, like an old friend.

"Impossible," I say

One of his hands slides down my back, and he shifts so I can hear his heartbeat when I think to listen for it. "Perhaps."

And in a way, that word alone leaves me with hope, which is all I've ever had anyway.

"Muraki, please…" My fingers curl in the front of his clothing. "Stay here. Or let me go with you. I…"

My breath catches. The bitter salt I can taste on my lips is from my tears. "I'm ruined. It's not your fault. It had nothing to do with you. But if you leave now…"

His fingers move through my hair. "There's nothing else I can do for you, Hirose."

Already, he's pulling away, and I don't know what to say to stop him. All I know is that anything I try will be futile, and humiliating for us both.

"Won't you at least tell me what I should do now?"

He slips out of bed and straightens his clothing again before looking back. "Live, Hirose. That's all."

"Why?"

"Because I want to know you're here. That's all."

"Selfish bastard."

"I know. But will you do that much for me?"

"I can't tell you no."

He doesn't smile, but he leans over me again, kissing my lips first, then my eyes. Tasting my drying tears.

Koji was right when he said I had never cried. Not in years, since long before he was born. But now, even as Muraki pulls away, licking his lips and surely tasting salt, it never occurs to me to be ashamed.

I sit up, to see him out. My head aches, and it's too much trouble to straighten my slumped shoulders. "I hope you find what you're looking for, Muraki."

"And you, Nanjo-san."

"Not likely."

"You'll be all right. I know it." He shakes his head, and his hair falls over his eye again. I know it will be the last time I see his face, and he stays where he is, letting me look for a moment more.

When he leaves, neither of us say goodbye.

~The End


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